From Flooded Homes to Saltwater Marsh

Ten months after Hurricane Sandy, there still are residents of shoreline communities in New York who are waiting for more government help. But in one vulnerable neighborhood, Oakwood Beach in Staten Island, the best possible result is finally starting to happen.

The residents of Oakwood Beach, a stretch of small houses built across what was once a saltwater marshland, have agreed to take advantage of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s ambitious plan to spend about $400 million to buy waterfront homes, demolish them and return these unprotected areas to nature. Mr. Cuomo had wanted to buy as many as 10,000 properties in the state that were damaged or destroyed by Sandy, but so far only 418 property owners, all in the Oakwood Beach area, have taken him up on the offer.

After Sandy, most residents there quickly agreed with him that their property was too exposed to fix. Some houses had been simply swept away by the storm. Others were partly demolished. The first 200 sales are expected to be concluded over the next few months with more than $70 million in federal Sandy funds. Once the entire area is taken over, the state will decide exactly how to turn it back into a natural salt marsh to help protect the houses further inland.

City Councilman James Oddo, who is running for Staten Island borough president, has proposed another approach. He suggests having the city and state try to purchase clusters of houses, then rebuild them higher and stronger to survive future floods. Those rebuilt houses would be offered for sale, first to the original owners, he said. But his idea could be far more expensive in the long run than Mr. Cuomo’s plan, and it could encourage more homes in areas that probably should not be built on at all.